By the Mountain Bound (16 page)

I step back. “Before you ask, I told her yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I will play the go-between. She says—” I touch my throat, and step back again. I don’t need to explain.

“If she can,” he says, meaning
if she can get the collar off
, “you should.”

I wish he would pursue me, but instead he stands planted, oak of battle, glaring at the tips of his own boots. “I’m not sure there can be a mediation.”

I lean my head to the side and study him—the straight nose, strong jaw, the worried pale eyes. Handsome beyond the
meaning of the word, he has always before seemed to me as a thing carved of supple wood. Now I see in him a brittleness that frightens. “Should it not be our task to avert that, if possible?”

He licks his lips and at long last meets my gaze. The first flakes of snow speckle his queue. “There are principles I will not compromise,” he says. “Don’t make me choose between you and them. Oh, Hel. Mingan, when this is over, I may marry. I may play the dutiful child of the Light. . . .”

His voice trails off. He lifts his shoulders and crosses the few feet that separate us, but stops before he touches me.

“Sigrdrifa,” I say, circling as wolves circle. “You must punish her, Strifbjorn.”

He turns aside. “Your proof?”

“A mortal witness.” Challenging. “A village full.”

“After the flyting. If I still have the authority.”

“Now, while you are certain you do.” If he will not touch me, I will touch him. I grab his shoulder. “Now, brother. There must be penance. The other children are not
choosers
. They will follow who they think is strong.”

We stare. He catches my chin in his palm. “You will always be the world to me.” His voice is hoarse with the vow. “No matter what happens. And I beg you, understand me. Understand what I must do. And stand by my side.”

Do not make me choose.

Mute, I nod. Strifbjorn kisses me roughly, on the mouth. Turns. Stalks away.

I watch him go, pain welling in my breast like a river under the ice of spring, so cold and so tight that even the burning pales. I throw my head back. If I were still a wolf, a real wolf, I
would cry into the night. But the sorrow and hurt and all the sharp brittle love dam in my throat, will not flow free. I cannot howl.

I sob, and it chokes me.

When Strifbjorn is gone, my wolves come from the forest. The snow falls faster now, whitening dark branches.

The Warrior

T
he snow followed Strifbjorn down the trail like that last, soft sound of Mingan’s. Broad flakes caressed his neck before they melted. By the time he came from the shelter of the trees, his sleeves and cuffs were wet through, the long guard hairs of his cloak frosted white.

I am losing him
, Strifbjorn thought,
losing them all
. When he tried to push the thought away, it would not go. Apprehension tangled in his stomach, leaving him queasy and troubled.

It snowed harder in the meadow, big wet flakes clumping on the ground in piles and furrows. He shuffled through, letting snow cling to his boots. Wind stung his cheeks. Ahead, two figures crossed from the sea-cliff to the door of the mead-hall. Strifbjorn knew one by the gray cloak slung around her shoulders and the other by her height and slight build. The chill in his belly settled deeper while he watched Heythe open one side of the door and hold it for Muire to precede her inside.

Strifbjorn paused, considering the closing wedge of firelight behind the door, thinking of what Muire might know—what Mingan suspected she knew—and what she might have told Heythe. And then he thought,
You must trust someone
.

He shook his head. There was no one he could afford to trust. Not the little historian. Not Yrenbend, not totally. Not even Mingan. Squaring his shoulders, Strifbjorn walked on.

The mead-hall was quiet. Yrenbend and a waelcyrge named Bergdis were playing at draughts at the north end of the hall. Strifbjorn nodded as he passed. Yrenbend caught Strifbjorn’s sleeve, a gold Lady glinting in his other hand. “She’s pled weariness and claimed your bench,” he said.

Strifbjorn had no doubts of whom he spoke.

“She sleeps?”

“And eats, apparently. She dined earlier.”

That surprised the war-leader. “Whatever did you find to feed her?”

Turning back to the board, he placed his Lady on a white square. “Your pardon,” he said to Bergdis, and then turned back to Strifbjorn while she studied the board. “The thralls keep the kitchen warm for their own needs. They eat better of a day than many in Dale do on feast-nights.”

“Ah,” Strifbjorn said. “Excellent, Yrenbend.” A waelcyrge brought Strifbjorn a drinking horn. He nodded thanks before she returned to her sewing. Around the hall, Strifbjorn could see some of his brothers and sisters at draughts, or playing knife-and-peg or knucklebones. Skeold sat at the foot of the dais upon which the Cynge’s chair rested, embroidering the hem of a gown, and Muire emerged from her niche bearing cloth for writing, pens and colors. From other niches, Strifbjorn heard soft sounds of conversation, lovemaking and what-have-you. His brother Hrothgar tuned a harp, seated on a stool in the corner farthest from the fire.

Strifbjorn’s charge, and Strifbjorn’s family. He turned to cast his eye over the lot of them, the length of the hall.
I’ll get us out of this somehow.

He slung his leg over the bench, sat beside Yrenbend and smiled at Bergdis. “May I play the winner?”

The Wolf

S
igrdrifa no longer paces the dock, but I find her scent there and follow her through the narrow streets of Northerholm. So large a town, it boasts three taverns—two more than Dale, which has not even an inn. Cold wrath takes me as I dance from shadow to shadow, a brave girl’s shiver still a memory on my skin. Sigrdrifa is hunting.

And I am hunting her.

A large town—there is not just the high road to search, but several others—but her scent lingers. So before dawn I find my sister lounging against a piling along the waterfront below the tavern called the Keeping Gull. She watches the fishermen, who are already putting out to sea, though the east is barely gray. Sigrdrifa watches them, and I . . . watch her.

What Strifbjorn will not do, I shall.

“Candle-flickers,” I say into her ear. I enjoy watching her jump and clutch the hilt of her sword. She whirls, but when she sees who stands at her shoulder her eyes narrow from surprise to rage.

Her furious hiss matches the sound of the sword wrenched from her sheath. “Come on Strifbjorn’s errand like a cur?”

She’s a strong one, Sigrdrifa, long and lean, with reach on me. I come inside it, Svanvitr in my right hand, angling her blow aside more slowly than I should. The cut lays flesh open to the bone across my upper arm.

“Thou hast scratched me, cat.”

But strong as she is, I am stronger. Quick as she is, I am quicker. I beat her blade aside, glide up. I wish to step inside her reach. She must keep me at a blade length.

She laughs at me and rises to my casting, belittles me in her turn. “First blood. Wilt summon thy de mon ess now, and let a woman fight for thee?”

Our blades clash, rise and fall. The beach is stones and shells; they rattle and crush underfoot. I drive her toward the water, away from the shelter of the pier. If the men watch, they watch in silence.

Glide and sidestep, move smooth over the turning pebbles. Touch, provoke and dance. Our blades peal like crystal bells. Svanvitr flares to light—sharp, blue-white, so we duel in a ring of cast shadows, as if a sundial chased our nimble feet.

But Sigrdrifa’s sword stays smoky-dark. I mark her cheek.

“I need no aid for such as thee—,” I say. The collar turns my voice to gravel, or perhaps it has always been so. I have worn the ribbon so long I can’t recall how I sound without it.

And I was a wolf then, anyway.

I turn Sigrdrifa’s blade and grin. I lunge. She steps aside. She feints, moves in a whirl of ermine-trimmed cloak, parries. She’s good.

Not good enough. No tricks, no brilliance or fakery. Just once, she is too slow, and I am inside her guard. I have her blade out of her hand and the point of my own under her chin.

“Bastard,” she hisses.

I can nod at the compliment. “An legendry be true, aye, and borne of my father’s body rather than my mother’s,” I answer. Now that she is captive, I can afford respectful tones. “And on to your own bastardy. A witness says you killed last night.”

“I claimed justice, aye.” Her eyes are dark as the night behind the stars. Svanvitr dents her throat.

“You killed for one who was not slain. And then killed the one you claimed to carry vengeance for. What justice is that?”

“You would slay your sister for a candle-flicker?”

My hand clenches on the wire-wound hilt of my sword. I would, aye.

But her life is not my life to take. I am not war-leader. Nor am I Cynge, or Lady.

I step a step away. “Not tonight. But forget not, Sigrdrifa, that it could happen.”

She opens her mouth. With blade-tip I touch her lower lip so the bright blood springs up from that place.

“Hush. I’ve naught to lose. And it would please me to put an end to you.”

She licks the blood from her mouth, in a fury that leaves her shaking. Her eyes flicker after her blade, and I could pray she reaches for it. But she nods, drawing her own blood, and I let Svanvitr slide from her throat.

“I won’t ask for your vow,” I say. A further insult. “But if I find thee hunting men, sister, thou shalt wish I’d sent thee to the embrace of thy victims.”

I step away and sheathe Svanvitr. She speaks not. But when I turn I feel her gaze like a rapier in my back.

T
his last trip through the shadows exhausts me, and even I feel the cold.
Too much in one night.

So far can I push, and no further. I crave Strifbjorn, but would he welcome my presence? He is at the mead-hall. Tonight I cannot stand the pretense.

I step from the shadows, north of the Ulfenfell, miles from the mead-hall. The coast is rockier here. The north slope of the mountain drops to a fjord-runneled stretch of coast which ends in a wall of ice half a mile tall. Greater mountains lie beyond the ice field, sword-edged in the darkness, catching the faint light of the stars.

The snowstorm is only on the south face of the Ulfenfell. Here, at the edge of the glacier, lichen grows on the till washed from beneath by summer melt, and icebergs calve into the northern sea. The glacier sucks dampness from the air, so the wind is not raw but knifelike, and there is only enough old snow on the stones to render them treacherous.

A broad neck of land points into the sea like an accusing finger. The moon has set. The east fades from silver to ice-pink as I choose a path on the ice-rimed cliff edge. Gray directionless light reveals the mane-tossing stallion sea five hundred feet below.

Sigrdrifa, aye, mocked me. And ’tis ungood to call my demon so soon again. But pain compels.

“Imogen,” I whisper.

In some little while I turn south to witness her dark wings rowing, stark against the watery sky. She lands before me, her wings gusting loess and snow. Her eyes shimmer with morning-cold radiance.

“My Lord. I did think you would not summon me so soon.”

She is needful as an infant, deadly as a knife. “Imogen. Do you hunger?”

She cocks her head, black-furred face intent, feathers soft. “Always, my Lord.”

I close her wrists in my hands and draw her in.

The Historian

M
y eyes burned so I could barely discern the letters on the roll of close-woven cloth before me, but I clung to my brush. I’d laid quills and knives on the rough wood trestle-top beside the sheet of thick leather that smoothed the surface for my work. Candles and a chipped stone lamp and the dim light of my own eyes gave almost-adequate illumination, though if I had been acting intelligently I would have waited for daylight. But frustration drove me to quiet my brain by busying my hands.

Unfortunately, it also drove me to shaking so hard that I didn’t dare touch the brush to the book. The knife-angled runes of the poem I was illuminating swam in my vision; a tear dripped down my cheek. I jerked my head back; it fell fortuitously in the margin.

But more water burned my eyes; I scrubbed it away with the back of my left hand and tipped my head back, breathing through my nose. The brush, laden with lapis pigment suspended in egg-white and grease, trembled in my hand.

I could do as Heythe asked. I could choose not to choose, even, and I supposed in time it would be just as if I had chosen her. After the flyting, it would be easy; she would be our Lady unopposed. And I could have what I wanted—

At the bottom of the trestle, Strifbjorn sat playing draughts with Yrenbend. Bergdis, who won the previous game, had retired her shield and adjourned for a walk in the first snow with her husband. Heythe had appropriated Strifbjorn’s bench and apparently slept.

My hand wavered over the letters, but they blurred and danced before my eyes. I shook my head—
useless
—and set the paint-loaded brush in a water-filled bowl. It was too easy to walk away; I just stepped over the bench and fled past the ominous Raven Banner and through the narrow rear door. Snow blew across my face as I crossed the small alley to the kitchens.

We had more thralls than we knew what to do with. Most of them slept in the low cottages clustered against the lee side of the mead-hall, but the privileged ones lay here, on pallets warmed by the banked cook-fires. As I entered, Thorra the cook sat up and pushed her blanket down. “Bright one—”

I halted her with an outstretched hand. “Don’t stir. I’m here to boil water.”

I broke ice on the water-butt, filled a kettle and set it on a hook over the coals. While the water slowly heated, I used the silence and precious near-privacy to think. Without Strifbjorn before me, without Heythe whispering in my ear.

Heythe was the Lady, and I owed her fealty. She’d as much as offered me Strifbjorn, like a choice bone thrown to a faithful dog. I knew Heythe would promise me a place by her chair, a seat in her council. To her, I would not be the littlest sister, the quiet one who was not much of a fighter.